Haunted
by LucidRush
Summary: She just laughed the pain off, taunting him. "You need to mean them, Potter! You need to really want to cause pain." Harry kills Bellatrix in the Atrium. Can Harry salvage his soul or will he end up like Voldemort. HPHG Rated M for violence and lemons later on.
1. Chapter 1

I know I should be working on Love Drunk and Feel Good Drag but this idea needed to be started. Anyway, enjoy my readers.

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Chapter 1: A Tear in Innocence

Nothing. He felt, nor saw, anything. He didn't feel Lupin as he pinned him to his chest, forcing him in place, didn't hear the sounds of spellwork and scream of pain around him, and he saw nothing but the fluttering veil in front of him.

Harry felt tears slide down his cheeks, the dirt running down like rivers of mud. He had to come back, it's just an archway. It wasn't possible. Sirius wasn't dead. Harry struggled hard and viciously against the bonds, maybe if he could reach him…

Lupin didn't release his hold on Harry. "There's nothing you can do, Harry…nothing…He's gone."

"He hasn't gone!" Harry yelled. He did not believe it, he would not believe it; still he fought Lupin with every bit of strength he had: Lupin didn't understand, people were hiding behind that curtain, he heard them whispering – Sirius had to be hiding.

"SIRIUS!" he bellowed, "SIRIUS!" Lupin tightened his hold on Harry, pressing him harder into his chest.

"He can't come back, Harry," said Lupin, his voiced cracked, under the pressure of Harry's struggles and grief. "He can't come back, because he's d "

"HE  IS  NOT  DEAD!" roared Harry. "SIRIUS!" There was movement going on around them, pointless bustling, the flashes of more spells.

To Harry it was meaningless noise, the deflected curses flying past them did not matter, nothing mattered except that Lupin stop pretending that Sirius, who had to be standing feet from them behind that old curtain, was not going to emerge at any moment, shake back his lanky, dark hair and reenter the battle.

Lupin dragged Harry away from the dais, Harry still staring at the archway, angry at Sirius now for keeping him waiting. But some part of him realized, even as he fought to break free from Lupin, that Sirius had never kept him waiting before. Sirius had risked everything, as always, to see Harry, to help him.

If Sirius was not reappearing out of the archway when Harry was yelling for him as though his life depended on it, the only possible explanation was that he could not come back… That he really was…

Harry felt as though ice had encased his entire body and time seemed to stop every heartbeat felt like a stab in the chest, and his eyes narrowed. Shifting to the side he saw the person  No, murderer  who had taken Sirius from him. Kingsley Shacklebolt was now trading spells with Bellatrix Lestrange, green and red flashes arcing off the walls of the room, debris exploding in dust clouds.

She was his. Nobody had the right to her life but him. White-hot anger ran through his veins. His fists tightened one on the hem of his robes, the other on his wand. It seemed as though even his wand wanted a fight, magic buzzed around his body, small sparks shooting from the tip of the light piece of wood.

"Harry?" Neville had slid down the stone benches one by on to the place where Harry stood. But was ignored as Harry's sight was locked onto Bellatrix.

Before Neville could call to him again a loud bang and a yell rang out from behind the dais. Harry saw Kingsley, yelling in pain, hit the ground. Bellatrix turned tail and ran as Dumbledore whipped around. He aimed a spell at her but she deflected it. She was halfway up the steps now 

"Harry  no!" cried Lupin, but Harry had already ripped his arm from Lupin's slackened grip.

"SHE KILLED SIRIUS!" bellowed Harry. "SHE KILLED HIM  I"LL KILL HER!"

And he was off, scrambling up the stone benches. People were shouting behind him but he didn't care. The hem of the murderers robes whipped out of sight ahead and they were back in the room where brains were swimming.

Harry ducked under a curse that flipped the tank into the air but was deluged in the potion that followed, he ignored the foul smelling fluid. Harry leapt over Luna, who was groaning on the floor, past Ginny, who said, "Harry  what ?" past Ron and Hermione, the latter who was still unconscious.

He wrenched open the door into the circular black hall and saw Bellatrix disappearing through a door on the other side of the room  beyond her was the corridor heading back to the lifts.

Harry's heartbeat sped up, not from the exertion of running, but from the raw hatred welling within him. He wanted to hurt her with every fiber of his being.

He ran, but she had slammed the door behind her and the walls had begun to rotate again. Once more he was surrounded by streaks of blue light from the whirling candelabra.

"Where's the exit?" he shouted desperately, as the wall rumbled to a halt again. "Where's the way out?" The room seemed to have been waiting for him to ask. The door right behind him flew open, and the corridor toward the lifts stretched ahead of him, torch-lit and empty. He ran…

He could hear a lift clattering ahead of him. He sprinted up the passageway, swung around the corner, and slammed his fist onto the button to call a second lift. It jangled and banged lower and lower; the grilles slid open and Harry dashed inside, now hammering the button marked Atrium. The doors slid shut and he was rising…

Harry's ragged breath filled the compartment as the lift sped up, seeming to sense Harry's aggression. He forced his way out of the lift before the grilles were fully open and looked around.

Bellatrix was almost at the telephone lift at the other end of the hall, but she looked back as he sprinted toward her, and aimed another spell at him.

He dodged behind the fountain; the spell she sent zoomed past him and hit the wrought gold gates at the other end of the room so that they rang like bells. She had stopped running, Harry could no longer hear her footsteps.

He crouched behind the statues, listening for her. _"Come out, come out, little Harry!" _she called in her mock-baby voice, which echoed off the polished wooden floors.

"What did you come after me for, then? I thought you were here to avenge my dear cousin!"

"I am!" shouted Harry, and a score of ghostly Harrys seemed to chorus _I am! I am! I am! _all around the room. He was reaching a breaking point.

"Aaaaaah…did you _love _him, little baby Potter?" Bellatrix laughed. Hatred rose in Harry such as he had never known before. He flung himself out from behind the fountain and bellowed _"Crucio!" _

Bellatrix screamed. The spell had knocked her off her feet, but she did not writhe and shriek with pain as Neville had  Harry was at her throat before she could move, he kicked her wand from her hand, and didn't even wince when he thought he felt a few of her fingers break under his foot.

"Never used an Unforgivable Curse before, have you, boy?" She yelled, abandoning her baby voice. Harry's next kick struck her face, this time he did wince as her jaw buckled under the blow, blood spurting from her mouth like a river.

She just laughed the pain off, taunting him. "You need to mean them, Potter! You need to really want to cause pain."

Harry's hatred continued to bubble just beneath the surface, a twisted sneer wound it's way across his face. Harry aimed his wand at her throat.

"Righteous anger won't hurt me for long, I'll kill you, you filthy half-bl"

"Avada Kedavra!" Her words died on her lips as green light smashed into her prone form, surprised etched on her face as the light left her eyes. Her head fell back against the cool wooden floor of the ministry building, blood still flowing from her gaping mouth.

Sirius' vengeance wasn't as sweet as he thought it would be though.

Harry thought he could feel something tear inside him, he felt sick. His world was spinning, the Atrium looking more like an amusement park ride.

A silent scream ran through him as what felt like a thousand hot pokers shot into his body. His vision faded and through half-lidded eyes he saw an approaching army of boots and sneakers, panicking voices surrounding him.

Bushy brown hair clouded him before his vision faded to black.

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Hey, I hope everyone liked this, i'll continue Harry's depth into darkness if it gets a positive response from enough people so review and tell me what you think. Also check out my other two Harry Potter fanfics and my other work if you're into anime.


	2. Chapter 2

Here's chapter 2 of Haunted, i think it came out okay but i'll let all of my readers be the judge of that. Right now, i'm following canon but as the story progresses i will deviate from the original storyline. Anyway, enjoy this chapter.

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Chapter 2: Wasteland

_You weren't strong enough, Harry. Why did you let me die? You never loved me, did you?_

"Sirius!" Harry bolted upright, his muscles groaning in protest as he shifted his shoulders, hefting his weight onto his elbows. His blurry eyes gazed around the room. He was in the hospital wing back at Hogwarts, a sliver of sunlight flashed across the horizon through the window.

It was just a dream, Sirius wasn't dead, the ordeal at the Department of Mysteries didn't happen, but as Harry slipped on his glasses and gazed around the room with clearer vision, sickening reality crashed around him.

Hermione lay in the bed next to his, unusually pale, probably from the curse Dolohov had hit her with. Ron was at his other side, bruised but looking otherwise okay. Neville was across the room, his nose mended but Harry could just make out a bottle of potion at his beside, most likely for recovery from the Cruciatus curse.

Harry skin crawled as he took in his friend's conditions. It was his fault, he led them to what was almost their death. He shook his head, they had followed him willingly, then why did he feel like someone had torn his stomach out and showed it to him?

He shook his foggy head, pressure behind his eyes nearly erupting into an earth-shattering migraine. Sirius had fallen through the veil; Harry nearly broke down when this though flashed through his head. But what had happened after that?

He had been so angry, there was a chase, and then a flash, but after that there was nothing. Ignoring the pain in his body, Harry pushed the sheets off of him and slid out of the bed, nearly jumping out of his skin when his feet touched the cold stone of the floor.

He slipped on the pair of trainers that were laying next to his bed, grabbing his wand, he quietly left the hospital wing. Each of his steps echoed down the empty hall, wisps of light streaming through each window as if everything was perfect.

Harry quickened his pace; he had to see Dumbledore. He passed no one on the way to the gargoyle that marked the entrance to Dumbledore's office; still too early for anyone to be awake. But as soon as he was standing in front of the statue he realized that he didn't know the password.

"Um…acid pops?" Nothing, the gargoyle didn't even blink. "Lemon drops?" Still nothing happened.

Harry was getting impatient. "I don't know…cockroach clusters?" He almost jumped out of his skin when the gargoyle sprang to life and moved out of the way.

As Harry reached for the handle to the door, Dumbledore's voice echoed around him.

"Enter." He hesitated before clasping the cold knob in his fist, slowly pushing the door open. Dumbledore sat at his desk, the usual assortment of whirring silver instruments was back in their proper places, as if he had never left.

The old man looked as if he had aged overnight, his wrinkles more pronounced that they were before. Tired blue eyes sat behind his half-moon spectacles. A tiny cry, soft and crooning rang from Dumbledore's left and there, sitting on the perch was a tiny, ugly, featherless Fawkes, wiggling happily in his tray of ashes. Another casualty of the Department of Mysteries.

"Well, Harry," said Dumbledore, drawing his attention from the baby bird, "you will be pleased to hear that none of your fellow students are going to suffer lasting damage from last night's events."

Harry stayed silent, it seemed as if Dumbledore was reminding him of the amount of damage he had caused by his actions. Harry couldn't meet the old man's eyes.

"Madam Pomfrey patched everyone up as soon as we arrived," said Dumbledore. "Nymphadora Tonks may need to spend a little time in St. Mungo's but it seems that she will make a full recovery."

Harry just nodded at the carpet, which had now brightened considerably from the sunlight pouring into the room. He was sure that all the portraits around the room were listening closely to every word Dumbledore spoke.

"I know how you are feeling, Harry," said Dumbledore very quietly. Harry's head throbbed.

"No, you don't," said Harry, and his voice was suddenly loud and strong. White-hot anger leapt inside him. Dumbledore knew _nothing _about his feelings.

Harry ignored Phineas Nigellus' painting, which was spouting off something about students wanting to be tragically misunderstood. His hands pressed to his stomach, he felt as if he'd be sick.

Harry turned his back and stared determinedly out the opposite window. He could see the Quidditch stadium in the distance. Sirius had appeared there once, disguised as the shaggy black dog, so he could watch Harry play…He had probably come to see whether Harry was as good as James had been…Harry had never asked him…

"There is no shame in what you are feeling, Harry," Harry just continued to stare out the window, an emptiness opening inside him. "On the contrary…the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength."

Harry felt white-hot anger lick his insides, blazing in that terrible emptiness, filling him with the desire to hurt Dumbledore for his calmness and empty words.

"My greatest strength, is it? Said Harry, his voice shaking, he no longer saw the stadium. "You haven't got a clue…you don't know…"

"What don't I know?" asked Dumbledore calmly. It was too much. Harry turned around, shaking with rage.

"I don't want to talk about how I feel, all right?"

"Harry, suffering like this proves that you are still a man! This pain is part of being human "

"THEN - I - DON'T - WANT - TO - BE - HUMAN!" Harry roared, and he seized one of the delicate instruments from the spindle-legged table beside him and flung it across the room. It shattered into a hundred tiny pieces against the wall. Several of the pictures let out yells of anger and fright, and the portrait of Armando Dippet said, _"Really!" _

"I DON'T CARE!" Harry yelled at them, snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace. "I'VE HAD ENOUGH, I'VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON'T CARE ANYMORE -"

He seized the table on which the instruments had stood and threw that too. It broke apart on the floor and the legs rolled in different directions.

"You do care," said Dumbledore. He had not flinched or made a single move to stop Harry from demolishing his office. His expression was calm, almost detached. "You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it."

"I - DON'T!" Harry screamed so loudly that he felt his throat might tear, and for a second he wanted to rush at Dumbledore and break him too; shatter that calm old face, shake him, hurt him, make him feel some tiny part of the horror inside Harry.

"Oh yes, you do," said Dumbledore, still more calmly. "You have now lost your mother, your father, and the closest thing to a parent you have ever known. Of course you care."

"YOU DON'T KNOW HOW I FEEL!" Harry roared. "YOU - STANDING THERE - YOU -"

But words were no longer enough, smashing things was no more help. He wanted to run, he wanted to keep running and never look back, he wanted to be somewhere he could not see the clear blue eyes staring at him, that hatefully calm old face. He turned on his heel and ran to the door, seized the knob, and wrenched at it.

But the door would not open. Harry turned back to Dumbledore. "Let me out," he said. He was shaking from head to foot.

"No." said Dumbledore simply. For a few seconds they stared at each other.

"Let me out," Harry said again.

"No." Dumbledore repeated.

"If you don't - if you keep me here - if you don't let me -"

"By all means continue destroying my possessions," said Dumbledore serenely. "I daresay I have too many."

He continued to stare at Harry's panting form from behind his desk. "Let me out." Harry said yet again, in a voice that was as cold and almost as calm as Dumbledore's.

"Not until I have had my say," said Dumbledore.

"Do you - do you think that I want to - do you think that I give a - I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU'VE GOT TO SAY!" Harry roared. "I don't want to hear _anything _you've got to say!"

"You will," said Dumbledore sadly. "Because you are not nearly as angry with me as you ought to be. If you are to attack me, as I know you are close to doing, I would like to have thoroughly earned it."

"What are you talking -"

"It is _my _fault that Sirius died," said Dumbledore clearly. "Or I should say almost entirely my fault - I will not be so arrogant as to claim responsibility for the whole. Sirius was a brave, clever, and energetic man, and such men are not usually content to sit at home in hiding while they believe others to be in danger. Nevertheless, you should never have believed for an instant that there was any necessity for you to go to the Department of Mysteries tonight. If I had been open with you, Harry, as I should have been, you would have known a long time ago that Voldemort might try and lure you to the Department of Mysteries, and you would never have been tricked into going there tonight. And Sirius would not have had to come after you. That blame lies with me, and me alone. It is my mostly my fault that Sirius died and that you took a life last night."

Harry was standing completely still, his hand on the doorknob. He was gazing at Dumbledore, barely breathing. Last night came crashing back down on him like a tidal wave. The chase of Bellatrix and his use of the killing curse to end her life. He could clearly see the life leave her eyes in his mind.

"Please sit down," said Dumbledore. It was not an order, it was a request. Harry hesitated, then walked slowly across the room now littered with silver cogs and fragments of wood and took the seat facing Dumbledore's desk.

"Am I to understand," said Phineas Nigellus slowly from Harry's left, "that my great-great-grandson - the last of the Blacks - is dead?"

"Yes, Phineas," said Dumbledore.

"I don't believe it," said Phineas brusquely.

Harry turned his head in time to see Phineas marching out of his portrait and knew that he had gone to visit his other painting in Grimmauld Place. He would walk, perhaps, from portrait to portrait, calling for Sirius through the house…

"Harry, I owe you an explanation -" Harry cut him off before he could go on. "The only thing I want explained is the prophecy."

Harry's emerald green eyes stared deeply into Dumbledore's blue ones. Harry could see the age stretched across the headmaster's features as the light fell upon him, the silver of his eyebrows and beard and upon the lines gouged deeply into his face.

Dumbledore sighed deeply, his eyes resting on the baby phoenix that rested in his tray of ashes. "Voldemort tried to kill you when you were a child because of a prophecy made shortly before your birth. He knew the prophecy had been made, though he did not know its full contents. He set out to kill you when you were still a baby, believing he was fulfilling the terms of the prophecy. He discovered, to his cost, that he was mistaken, when the curse intended to kill you backfired. And so, since his return to his body, and particularly since your extraordinary escape from him last year, he has been determined to hear the prophecy in its entirety. This is the weapon he has been seeking so assiduously since his return: the knowledge of how to destroy you."

The sun was getting higher in the sky, it's golden light filling the glass case in which the sword of Godric Gryffindor resided, gleaming white and opaque, the fragments of the instruments Harry had thrown to the floor glistened like raindrops, and behind him, the baby Fawkes made soft chirruping noises in his nest of ashes.

"The prophecy's smashed," Harry said blankly. "I was pulling Neville up those benches in the - the room where the archway was, and I ripped his robes and it fell…." Harry turned away from Dumbledore.

"The thing that smashed was merely the record of the prophecy kept by the Department of Mysteries. But the prophecy was made to somebody, and that person has the means of recalling it perfectly."

"Who heard it?" asked Harry, though he thought he knew the answer already.

"I did," said Dumbledore. "On a cold, wet night sixteen years ago, in a room above the bar at the Hog's Head Inn. I had gone there to see an applicant for the post of Divination teacher, though it was against my inclination to allow the subject of Divination to continue at all." Dumbledore reflected with a slight smile.

"The applicant, however, was the great-great-granddaughter of a very famous, very gifted Seer, and I thought it common politeness to meet her. I was disappointed. It seemed to me that she had not a trace of the gift herself. I told her, courteously I hope, that I did not think she would be suitable for the post. I turned to leave."

Dumbledore stood up and walked past Harry to the black cabinet that stood beside Fawkes's perch. He bent down, slid back a catch, and took from inside it the shallow stone basin, carved with runes around the edges.

Harry watched in fascination as Dumbledore pressed his wand to his temple and withdrew silvery, gossamer-fine strands of thought, depositing them in the basin. The thoughts swirled within the penseive for a moment. With a sigh, he raised his wand and prodded the silvery substance with the tip.

A figure rose out of it, draped in shawls, her eyes magnified to enormous size behind her glasses, and she revolved slowly, her feet in the basin. But when Sibyll Trelawney spoke, it was not in her usual ethereal mystic voice, but in harsh, hoarse tones Harry had heard her use once before.

"THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD APPROACHES…BORN TO THOSE WHO HAVE THRICE DEFIED HIM, BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES…AND THE DARK LORD WILL MARK HIM AS HIS EQUAL, BUT HE WILL HAVE POWER THE DARK LORD KNOWS NOT…AND EITHER MUST DIE AT THE HAND OF THE OTHER FOR NEITHER CAN LIVE WHILE THE OTHER SURVIVES…THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD WILL BE BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES…"

The slowly revolving Professor Trelawney sank back into the silver mass below and vanished. The silence in the office was absolute. Neither Dumbledore nor Harry nor any of the portraits made a sound. Even Fawkes had fallen silent.

"It means me, doesn't it…" Harry finally broke the silence, his fists gripping the arms of the chair, knuckles white.

"Yes, Harry, it does." Dumbledore said quietly.

Harry felt as if the world was closing in on him. It was up to him to kill the man, monster, that not even Dumbledore could kill.

For a long time, neither of them spoke. Somewhere far beyond the office walls, Harry could hear the sound of voices, students heading down to the Great Hall for an early breakfast, perhaps.

How could anybody even desire food, or laugh, or play? How could anyone do anything?

"Professor…" Harry trailed off, staring at the carpet in his shadow.

"Yes, Harry?" Dumbledore asked quietly.

"I need to be stronger." The sun glinted off his glasses, his bright green eyes slightly dimmer and darker than they had been the night before.

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There you go! Hope you all enjoyed it, it took like 6 hours straight of writing to finish. I had to watch the movie and read the ending like 6 times to get it right. :] Anything for my avid readers. Review!


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